Ekiti State Governor Kayode Fayemi has said the country requires fundamental changes in its structure and management pattern for effective deployment of its potentials for greatness.
Fayemi said it was possible for the country to reverse its current bleak reality towards achieving a prosperous future.
He stressed that the needed change would only be possible with a modification of the people’s sense of value and leadership pattern.
The governor spoke yesterday at a lecture he delivered at Chatham House, London.
The lecture was entitled: “State governance, democratisation and development in Nigeria.”
The governor, who lamented the country’s inability to match its huge potentials with physical and economic development, argued that for the country to achieve greatness, “there must be a fundamental political transformation; then, good governance must become the underlying basis of political power.”
He cited the transformation his administration had carried out since its inception in 2010, and said such achievements were possible because of the many innovations his government introduced into the management of the state’s resources, both human and material.
Fayemi noted that positive changes could be achieved by any government without inflicting hardship on the people.
He said his administration was able to raise the state’s Internally Generated Revenue (IGR) profile in multiple folds from a measly N106 million ($650,000) a month, to over N600 million ($3,75m), and it is anticipated to hit the N1 billion ($6m)-a-month mark in the near future, without raising taxes and levies.
The governor claimed that growth has continued to elude the country despite its huge potentials, because of its current warped structure which allows for over concentration of power at the centre to the detriment of the states.
He also criticised the nation’s extant Constitution, noting that it was necessary for the people to be allowed to renegotiate the terms and principles that should guide their existence in view of the growing division among the federating units.
“The structural deformities of the Nigerian federation have circumscribed many of the possibilities of our state, and many other states in Nigeria and the country as a whole. It is difficult, if not impossible to sustain good governance at the national level in Nigeria because of the structural fatalities that I have mentioned earlier.
“The over-concentration of powers in the Federal centre must give way to devolution and decentralisation of power and authority. Therefore, a critical fundamental political restructuring of the Nigerian federation is an unavoidable step that must be taken to generate the basis for the creation and sustenance of a participatory, consensus-oriented, accountable, transparent, responsive, effective and efficient, equitable and inclusive national governance and one that is based on the rule of law.
“I am convinced that this can, and will definitely, happen in Nigeria at some point in the near future. Nigeria is a deeply divided, but immensely blessed and potentially great country. Why Nigerians and foreigners are often focussed on the deep divisions, little is said, for the most account, on our immense assets and potentials.
“What Nigerians need to do is to use our immense blessings, both human and natural, and transform our potential greatness into real greatness, in order to reduce our deep divisions and enhance or strengthen our unity.”
“With these, I believe that the question of deepening democracy and enhancing development would be largely resolved. Nigeria cannot achieve this without a national resolution by Nigerians to come together as one people with a common destiny.
“The true representatives of the various parts of Nigeria last met between September and October 1958 to agree on the ways in which the federation should be constituted. This was during the last round of the Constitutional Conferences preceding independence.
“Since then, neither the military regimes nor the civilian governments at the centre have allowed the Nigerian people to come together democratically and in all their diversity, to re-determine their common fate.
“From the insurgency in the Niger Delta to the extremisms in the far north, justice, equity and fairness can be used as the mechanisms of preserving and consolidating Nigeria’s national unity,” Fayemi said..
